If you could go back and perform artistic engineering on one latent trait, or characteristic, of a beloved musician—an initially benign or secondary trait in that musician’s work that would gain prominence and eventually detract from his or her work—what would it be?
My answer would be Joe Strummer‘s propensity for name-checking world musicians, political figures, and exotic locations. This trait was a useful, secondary device in his writing from the beginning. The practice peaked to useful effect on Sandinista, but by Combat Rock it was out of control. I love the guy and those last two solo albums he released before dying weren’t bad, but his music was bogged down by his impulse to play up his role as the savvy traveler of rock. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to work this out through his own satellite radio show.
Elvis Costello’s complete inability to play even moderately accomplished guitar. It was okay until he decided he should play extended guitar solos and show off his vintage six-string collection in concert. It’s impressive only if you want to hear ten different kinds of guitar all sound like sonic turds.
Also I wish I’d been able to reign in Dave Davies’ atrocious guitar tone sometime in the ’80s.
I got five words for you:
Sometime In New York City
I suppose I wouldn’t have been engineering for maximum *commercial* success, but I totally woulda thrown out 90% of what ZZ Top was layin’ down in the 80s-90s.
HVB, thanks for playing, but I’m not asking that we suggest the obvious – and toss out a string of crap that any artist is bound to produce. I’m looking for your thoughts on precise artistic engineering that could have removed or changed the trait that led to that bad work or string of works. For instance, it might be argued that Lennon needed to have his sloganeering gene tempered, thereby avoiding Sometime in New York City. I believe that’s where you were headed, right?
Lou Reed’s chutzpah. Well-served in the 20-something, boring by the 40-year-old, embarrassing now.
Something I’ve mentioned before is what I think of as the Peter Principle of music. The Peter Principle, in the context of a business, states that people rise to their own level of incompetence. You keep advancing, getting promoted, etc, until you reach a position where you aren’t actually able to do the work. Thus, entrenched people in business-type situations are all incompetent, a somewhat cynical perspective on bureaucracy.
Applied to rock, it would mean that an artist’s initial appeal and “spark” is a result of their musical ambition, reaching for competence and complexity that is still beyond their abilities. Yet when they do attain this competence, the music suffers from being overly precious, safe, or over-thought. There are many people I feel fall into this category, including Rod Argent, Joe Jackson and Andy Partridge.
Of course, this is a difficult strait to navigate, as the opposite of this is the artist who seems to settle into a formula, perhaps James Taylor or, for me, Robyn Hitchcock.
Excellent point.
Elvis Costello has gone to the brink before, as has anyone who has attempted a “classical” album.
I wish Prince had never discovered Jehovah’s Witnesses, so I would engineer that out of his worldview, forcing him to wrestle with the spirituality/carnality thing without a guidebook indefinitely.
That fateful day when Bruce Springsteen went from telling the stories of the working man with a populist point of view to rubbing elbows with politicians and publicly drinking the liberal kool-aid to being a campaign song writer for Obama.
I think for Costello, the initial burst of lyrical genious turned into a big bag of hot air. You may draw the line pre or post Imperial Bedroom, but the line is there.
Interesting… So opposing the Bush administration is drinking the liberal Kool-Aid?
I smell some hot-button rock-politics assumptions underway regarding The Boss and the so-called drinking of liberal Kool-Aid. Not that I don’t think we’re incapable of discussing this topic in a reasonable way, but I challenge us to discuss this in a reasonable way. Can The Boss – artistically speaking – be criticized for letting his political agenda detract from his music regardless of whether we agree with his political agenda or not? On the other hand, if we can look past our own political leanings, can we fairly conclude that it’s his political activism that’s made his music suffer? Either question is valid and by asking them I don’t mean to assume I really know where anyone stands politically, although I reserve the rights to make assumptions about some of your musical tastes based on your RTH handles:)
I hope you see what I’m getting at? I just want to make sure we’re dedicating our resources for artistic engineering as best as we are able and don’t get sidetracked on how any of us might characterize The Boss’ choice of beverage.
Personally I think that the Boss’ music has been suffering from about the time that he kicked Vinnie “Mad Dog” Lopez out of the band. That’s just my personal taste. But his lyrics reflect the same humanist stance that he’s been taking since 1978.
The closest I’ve seen him come to political grandstanding in his lyrics is the title track from Magic, and even that is fairly subtle and not directed at anyone in particular. Cautioning people not to give up fundamental liberties out due to some ginned-up fear doesn’t seem to be a particularly partisan or radical view. It actually seems to be quite American.
Well, I don’t know if I’d call it “artistic engineering”, but there are more than a few dead rock stars that I wish had found a way to temper their appetite for drugs and alcohol.
You know, Pete, that poses a whole other series of questions. I never liked the the whole “if they had lived” argument. I don’t know that Janis would still be important or relevant to these times. I think that her untimely death gave her a certain aura. I suppose that when any GREAT artist leaves this mortal coil too soon, they leave behind an open-ended career. Something tells me that Janis would have toiled through the 70s and probably be playing the casinos this day and age. Maybe she would have made a “comeback” album dueting with the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Alanis Morrisette. That record would have been attributed to the great Clive Davis in some way.
I’m not trying to pick on poor Janis, she’s just the first one that came to mind. On the other hand, she might have gone on to revolutionize the music world we know and love. That’s te mystery and tragedy of early death: We’ll never truly know.
I do agree with you. It would be nice to have ol’ Jimi around. Or Keith. Or Janis. Or Elvis. Or anybody.
TB
I think Springsteen was a socially and politically thoughtful person and artist and had intelligent ideas about how our world could and should work… he veered away from this in the last 5 or so years (about the time he started rubbing elbows with John Kerry). I liked him better as a (perceived) independent.. that’s all.
There are drinkers of the red 0% real fruit beverage on both sides…and problems with this on both sides as well.
…and now back to the music
Just got the 2-disc The Who Sell Out. I know this is their ” great” record of the 60’s but I am not connecting to it so far
While I agree that there are problems on both sides, I don’t agree that they are even remotely proportional.
I’ll just leave it at that because I really take no joy in discussing politics, especially when we could be parsing out the differences between Elvis Costello’s 7th and 8th reissues of Mighty Like A Rose.
As luck would have it, there’s a serendipitous healing opportunity here, Jungleland. Just last week, I got a copy of A Quick One. I’ve never heard it before and I haven’t listened to it yet. I’ll do so this week and report back.
You’ll see that this excellent Sell Out question has been moved to The Main Stage!
Can you please elaborate on this, specifically as it pertains to Joe Jackson and Andy Partridge?